1.1.4-Sarah1281
Brick!Club Day 4: And the Bishop was also there Though it is not unrealistic (or so Law&Order tells me), I was a little exasperated by the female accomplice of the counterfeiter. To begin with, it is always a terrible idea to believe the things that people who are trying to convict you and/or the people you care about say because there’s a good chance they’re making it up and even if they’re not they’re only saying it to have a better chance of ruining your life and/or the life of someone close to you. But even if she believed that he was cheating on her, he was still only in this predicament because he was trying to take care of her and their child. She evidently needed the money or he would not have had to risk so much with (apparently badly-made) fake money. This indicates he was willing to help out financially, even if he may not have always been able to offer much. So she would have him punished for trying to help and deprive herself and their child of any future aid? And what’s more, apparently her confession damned her as well as now there was evidence to convict both of them and they might have been killed for it (it didn’t say but it did point out that it was punishable by death then though I think that they would be less likely to execute the female accomplice). That poor helpless, child is probably going to die unless they succeed in becoming a gamin like Gavroche or unless they can find a way to be touched by the Bishop’s charity. I feel like the case may have been too far away for the child to be able to benefit from his charity, though, because he hadn’t heard of the case before people were gossiping about it and how brilliant the prosecution was. I always wonder, when I see things like that happening and lives are destroyed by a spiteful confession, just how long the person confessing (who would have been free without their testimony) believes that it was worth it. So the man cheated on her (or so she thought). How long does she think that he deserved to die for it or, if that was not what occured, to be imprisoned for years on end and be treated as the scum of the Earth for the rest of his life if he ever gets parole? I imagine that shortly after she confessed and she had a chance to calm down she realized what she had done and regretted it but it was too late. And was there a way for her to have found out that she was lied to about her lover’s character? I’m not sure if I would have wanted her to be or not. On the one hand, I feel like the man whose life she so cruelly ruined deserves for her to know the truth and be fully aware of her actions but on the other it might just be too much for her to bare to see just what she did all for a lie. And, uh, yes. The Bishop was in this chapter as well. I wonder if he would have had such a strong reaction had the method of execution been different from a guillotine. It seems that he already has issues with guillotines given the events that he fled from with regards to the Terror. I also have difficulty really picturing what the people that Hugo describes as being ignorant are. I know what ignorance is, of course, but the extent and scope of what these poor people who haven’t received even the most basic of education rather escapes me. I can’t imagine that I’ve met anyone that comes close to it. I feel that that negatively impacts my understanding of the story but I’m not sure how to fix that. Commentary Pilferingapples It’s always a terrible idea, yes— but who knows what the woman in question was being offered, or threatened with? As you say, the people being discussed in these chapters are ignorant in ways that many people now will never approach. The perpetrators in the counterfeit case would never have seen an episode of True Crime Dramas, wouldn’t know their rights, and would be very easy to lie to— who would ever tell them if the police overstepped their bounds? So I’m inclined to be rather more sympathetic. Also, I think it’s interesting to note that —intentionally or not—your offense seems directed largely to the almost accidental criminals who are convinced to turn on each other, and not to the prosecutors who did the convincing, which is pretty clearly and definitely the attitude of most of the in-book audience. But you acknowledge the problem of ignorance on the part of the criminals; that same ignorance the Bishop holds the educated responsible for. “Where will the Prosecutor be tried?” indeed… Sarah1281 (reply to Pilferingapples) Well, I figured that since we were told that the prosecution was only able to prove anything with her testimony, her testimony was procured when she was told that he had been cheating on her and proof was manufactured, and that an accomplice that I’m assuming was her was thus on trial that that was the whole story. I had not considered the possibility that they might have also softened her up beforehand by threatening her with a harsher sentence and claiming that they had enough to convict her but not her lover since she had been the one to actually get caught with the counterfeit coin. That is a good point. The reason that I was more annoyed at her than at the prosecution was because she acted in a manner that was against her self-interest and ruined her life over what seems to be petty jealousy. The prosecution was never supposed to be on her side. It’s a rather unethical thing to do to someone but I’ve seen too many lawyer shows to be surprised when it happens. It was a morally unsound tactic but it was acting intelligently and successfully achieved their goals. The woman’s ignorance and lack of clearly defined legal rights (did they refuse to release her even though they had not charged her until she gave them what they wanted? I bet that didn’t make it into the story) probably just made it easier for the prosecution but what she did didn’t seem all that much different from what other suspects have done on more modern stories. People so often let their emotions get the better of them and do things that are self-sabotaging for a momentary satisfaction and I always wish that they hadn’t.